“Day & Night” magazine spoke to Jean-Christophe Babin, Group CEO – Bulgari, on the sidelines of the third edition of LVMH Watch Week, in which Bvlgari’s collection themed “Time is a jewel” focussed heavily on the Serpenti collection and the star of the show, the Piccolissimo, a true jewel of micro-technology
Is Bvlgari releasing all of its Novelties for the year now?
This is the first of our events for the year; Bvlgari will also be present at Watches & Wonders in April and Geneva Watch Days initiated by Bvlgari, which will take place in late August or early September. Therefore, Bvlgari is launching only one-third of its novelties for the year now.
How does it feel to win the GPHG Grand Prix for the Octo Finissimo?
For us, internally, it is an amazing award. We are jewellers primarily and born in Rome, and our core business is jewellery even though we have been crafting watches for more than 100 years. Until a couple of decades ago, we were not considered a first-rate watchmaker. Thanks to our watches in recent years, including the Octo Finissimo saga, we have acquired a reputation and respect as first-league players, which is highly motivating. It is a fantastic boost of energy, of pleasure and recognition for all of us in our team. All of us have been working so hard to create this amazing saga.
As for our retail partners, it is the best argument when the client is hesitating about buying our product. Being the winner of the Golden Hand means we are the best watchmaker not just in the Swiss watch industry, but worldwide. For us, in our boutiques also, this is a powerful argument and it boosts the confidence of our clients when buying our watches.
It is easy to sell a Patek Phillipe or an Audemars Piguet; when you are selling watches and jewellery, it is easy to sell jewels and slightly more difficult to sell watches. If your watch is a first-league watch and a Grand Prix winner at the Golden Hand level, then we feel much more confident in pushing our watches as well. In addition to all of this, we are also pushing boundaries and that is very important for us.
Can you tell us about your new BVL100 calibre?
The 5 cent is the smallest coin currently in Switzerland, and you cannot actually buy anything with it. The BVL100 calibre is part of a module – meaning not only the movement but also the case – and the whole thing is not bigger than the coin. The actual movement inside the module is smaller than the coin. We took the smallest existing round mechanical movement. This is major news because after the Quartz Crisis, when all mechanical movements almost disappeared, a lot of efforts have gone into movements for masculine watches, with Finissimo being the most recent and most famous.
Conversely, very little has been done for ladies’ watches, especially jewellery watches. This meant that most jewellery watches, until recently, were powered by quartz movements, which is fine by itself. When you think about a watch that requires 1,000 hours of craftsmanship – to craft the body, set with stunning gem stones – and which uses the most precious materials, but has on the inside an electrical heart, there is a lack of consistency there.
Our jewellery watches are good and sell very well, and it is a big segment for us. We thought that based on our learning with the Finissimo, and given our strength in jewellery watches, it was our mission and our duty to apply to ladies’ watches what we have been applying to the men’s watches, providing, thanks to Finissimo, contemporary elegance.
We started the project with the objective to replace – in the jewellery watches first, and then, in the ladies’ watches as the second step – all the quartz movements with micro-mechanical movements. There were also other challenges because the Serpenti has a very small head and we had to design a really small movement, reinventing the watchmaking chain – meaning that we had to eliminate any component that was not functionally mandatory.
We found many of them, and were finally able to pare down to 102 components only, to be precise. This is a record too, as we did not compromise on accuracy. Due to those few components, we are allowing – I wouldn’t say easy assembling, but – possible manual assembling, and more importantly, maintenance as well.
Components that the eye cannot see are very difficult to manipulate, and even more difficult to repair. The watch is very reliable, a possible consequence of the movement. Last but not least, it is a big step versus the movements of the 50s and the 70s as those movements used to have very limited power reserve and used to be extremely complex to set up, for rewinding, and setting the time.
We have applied for a patent for the module – it is a small module and features a big crown. There are two arrows; one arrow allows the setting of the time – the hours and minutes – turning the other arrow allows the rewinding of the barrel. It is a bidirectional crown, which is very easy to set up; another big step.
I can then push back the crown, insert the module into the watch, and close the head of the watch. The beauty of the module is that it is absolutely symmetric – meaning that if I am left-handed, I insert it in one direction and if I am right-handed, I insert it in the opposite direction and it sits exactly right for me either way.
It allows the Serpenti Misteriosi to be the only watch on the market that works for the left-handed as well as the right-handed clients. This is extremely interesting as not everyone is right-handed, and we cannot as such, especially for the high-end products, create double references – one for the right-handed clients and another for the left-handed ones.
To summarise, it is a world record for the 21st century, the rebirth of new generation micro-mechanical movement; very easy to set up; 30 hours of power reserve; 12.30 mm in diameter, 2.50 mm thick, and 1.30 grams in weight. Also, if any maintenance is required, unlike earlier when a client would have to send back the entire watch, now they can just remove the module easily and send it to us.
